The buzzards have gorged on the corpses, picking out the eyes and
ripping their way into the remains through the empty stomachs. Nothing
but skin and bone is left.

The unprecedented drought that has parched northern Mexico — and
stretched into Arizona, New Mexico and Texas — has been as good for
these scavengers as it has been calamitous for the region’s ranchers
and farmers.

Over the last 12 months, 350,000 head of cattle have starved to
death here in Chihuahua, Mexico’s largest state, according to El
Barzon, a national association that represents the owners of small and
medium-sized farms.

Without rain, there is no pasture.

“With the capital, I could start another business,” rancher Ismael
Solorio, 24, says wistfully as he considers selling his remaining herd.
“If it doesn’t rain, I will have no choice.”

Solorio inherited 200 cows from his grandfather in 2008, in the
community of Constitucion, about two hours northwest from the state
capital, Chihuahua city. The unusually dry, difficult conditions slowly
whittled that figure down to 160 a year ago.

But the last year has been disastrous. A total of 26 cows have
starved to death over the winter and spring, and he was forced to sell
another 10. He borrowed money to buy pasture to put a little fat and
meat on their lean frames.

In recent weeks, seasonal rains have helped reduce the number of
Mexico’s 32 states acutely affected by drought from 18 to five. But
most of Chihuahua remains in a state of emergency.

If strong rains do not come here soon, the decision will be taken
out of his hands, Solorio says. He will either sell or watch his entire
herd die in front of him. “If I don’t sell them while they are still
healthy, it will be a write-off,” he told GlobalPost.

Solorio could be waiting in vain, according to Carlos Gay, an
atmospheric physicist and head of the Climate Change Program at Latin
America’s largest university, the UNAM in Mexico City.

“Northern Mexico has always been arid, and there have often been
droughts,” he said. “But what is strange is the duration of this
drought, and the fact that it has been preceded by other droughts. Is
it really a drought, or the region’s new climate?”

It is not just the cattle ranchers who are suffering.

So far, this year, some 60,000 families, including many impoverished
Tarahumara Indians, living in the remote Copper Canyon, have needed
food aid from the regional and federal governments.

In April, the Mexican Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill that
would force the country to slash its carbon footprint 30 percent by
2020, making it only the second country, after the UK, to set itself
legally binding targets.

And no wonder. Normally, Chihuahua produces 100,000 metric tons of
corn a year. But in 2011, the harvest was all but wiped out. The entire
state — Mexico’s largest — produced just 500 tons. According to the
state government, local farmers lost 897.5 million pesos ($65 million)
as a result.

Although corn was the hardest-hit crop, it was hardly the only one.
Chihuahua’s bean harvest in 2011 was just 20,000 tons, down more than
100,000 tons from the previous year. That cost local growers around
$112 million.

The lack of rain is forcing the region’s farmers to draw ever more
heavily on the aquifers lying below their fields. Yet that is no
solution either.

The aquifers’ sole source of replenishment is the rain itself. And
just 3 percent of the precipitation that falls here ever makes it to
the aquifers. Most of the rest evaporates.

As a result, the farmers are having to dig their wells deeper and deeper into the rocky ground.

Rafael Armendariz, 65, is president of the community of Benito
Juarez, a few miles from Constitucion. He says that wells, which a
generation ago produced water from a depth of 250 feet, now have to be
excavated, at great cost, to around 800 feet.

To make matters worse, CONAGUA, the national water commission, has
not done any hydrological studies of the local aquifer. No one in
Benito Juarez knows how close they are to the aquifer running dry.

“We don’t know what else to do,” says Armendariz, as he predicts
that the current generation could be the last in Benito Juarez to work
the land. “Farming is the only thing we have ever done. That is why we
keep at it.”

And the costs of deeper wells go beyond their excavation. Alejandro
Rodriguez, 46, uses three wells to irrigate his 338-acre peach and
apple farm on the outskirts of Chihuahua city.

His monthly electricity bill for pumping that water from an aquifer
350 feet down can reach almost $10,000. As the wells go deeper, the
electricity required increases exponentially.

The regional government talks about climate change but has done
little, says Martin Bustamente, of the Chihuahua branch of El Barzon.

“We have never learned to live in the desert and now that climate
change has arrived, we are finally going to have to catch up or face
disaster,” he warns.

He is calling for government support for farmers to acquire more
efficient, state-of-the-art irrigation systems and for no aquifer to be
used unsustainably. He is also pushing for a way to have thirsty urban
areas pay the region’s farmers, who, effectively, manage the natural
watersheds that supply the cities’ water.

Above all, he wants existing laws to be enforced so that the amount
of water actually withdrawn from aquifers does not exceed the
concessions authorized by CONAGUA.

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